Unit of Assessment: Physics

REF impact found 181 Case Studies

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Summary of the impact

This case study describes the development, application and
commercialisation of an open source tool, BSMBench that enables supercomputer
vendors and computing centres to benchmark their system's
performance. It comprehensively informs the design and testing of new
computing architectures well beyond other benchmarking tools on
the market, such as Linpack.

The significance of our code is that, unlike other benchmarking tools,
it interpolates from a communication- to a computation-dominated
regime simply by varying the (physics) parameters in the code, thus
providing a perfect benchmark suite to test the response of modern
multi-CPU systems along this axis. The impact of this work has great
reach: a start-up company, BSMbench Ltd, has been founded
to develop and commercialise the software; adopters have included IBM
- one of the giants of the supercomputer world (where it uncovered errors
in their compilers); it has been deployed by Fujitsu to validate
its systems, by HPC Wales, a multi-site, commercially focussed national
computer centre and by Transtec, an HPC company employing
over 150 staff; and tutorial articles about BSMBench have appeared
in magazines such as Linux Format.

This software tool spawned from our research into "Beyond the
Standard Model" (BSM) physics which aims to understand the Higgs
mechanism in particle physics at a fundamental level. This involved
simulating quantum field theories using bespoke code on some of the
fastest supercomputers on the planet.

Submitting Institution

Swansea University

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

The performance of absolute distance measuring systems has been improved
in terms of accuracy, traceability, reliability and cost through the
introduction of new methodology arising from research at the University of
Oxford. This has brought commercial benefit to a German company making
measurement systems, through the creation of a new product line. New
capabilities for measurement have been delivered to a first customer in
Germany. The research has also resulted in the establishment of new
activity at the National Physical Laboratory, and influenced UK and
European technology roadmaps for future manufacturing.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

The University of Southampton's distinguished body of work on the design
of technology for gamma-ray detection and imaging has informed new
counter-terrorism practices. Technological advances arising from the
research have been crucial to delivering significant benefits in the
fields of homeland security and nuclear safety — the latter particularly
in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. A spin-out company, Symetrica,
currently employs 26 people in the UK and the USA, has a forecast turnover
of more than £10 million for 2013-14 and has been recognised as an example
of best practice. It is a technological leader in the field of radioactive
isotope identification.

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

Our research on semiconductor materials and devices has led to the
establishment by e2v Technologies of a combined manufacturing, research
and development facility within the School of Physics and Astronomy. We
have adapted and transferred device simulation software to e2v, and have
provided epitaxially-grown semiconductors and access to fabrication
facilities which have been used in their manufacturing processes. Devices
fabricated within the facility, which was opened in 2011, have generated
sales of £7M for e2v. This initiative has also led to shifts in the
investment priorities of e2v, and mitigated risks to the company arising
from import restrictions associated with the US International Traffic in
Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Summary of the impact

A new procedure for the measurement and characterisation of
polycrystalline exchange bias
systems has been developed which has impacted significantly the
manufacture of computer hard
drive read-heads by companies such as Seagate Inc and Western Digital
Corp. The new
measurement procedure has enabled a typical 40% increase in the thermal
stability of the
antiferromagnetic materials used in computer hard drive read heads. The
procedure has also
improved the manufacturing process of the read-heads giving increased
material performance and
has resulted in a ~25% improvement in the resolution of detecting a bit.

Submitting Institution

University of York

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

In public perception, antimatter used to be associated with science
fiction, but the creation and trapping of antihydrogen at CERN by
the ATHENA and ALPHA Collaborations has sparked world-wide media
interest in the real science of antimatter. Building on this, we
started a campaign of public dissemination and education to promote and
explain our work through media interviews, popular articles, and public
lectures including a Welsh language component. We developed software
simulators that have been used by school pupils in Masterclasses
to re- create virtually CERN's antihydrogen production. YouTube clips and
webcasts with over 100,000 hits have been produced and we have
hosted thousands of visitors per year in CERN. These activities
resulted in improved understanding of antimatter among school students and
the wider population, and a radical change in the public perception of
antimatter, which is now associated with the experiments at CERN rather
than with Star Trek.

Summary of the impact

Semiconductor wafers are subject to damage from misaligned handling tools, leading to cracks.
Most of these are benign, but a few propagate to cause silicon wafer breakage during high
temperature processing, leading to losses in production time costing millions of dollars per year.
Research in Durham showed that X-ray Diffraction Imaging can be used to identify which cracks
will catastrophically fail. As a consequence, Jordan Valley UK Ltd has designed and already sold
over £M [text removed for publication] worth of X-ray imaging tools to the semiconductor industry.
The company identifies this product as being critical to its continuation, safeguarding more than 25
jobs, and growth over the past 2 years.

Unit of Assessment

Summary Impact Type

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

A range of techniques based on laser physics and developed since 1993 by
the group of Prof Telle in our analytical laser spectroscopy
unit (ALSU) has led to:

Founding a spin-off company, Applied Photonics which produces
remote-sensing products employing laser spectroscopy to detect the
chemical composition of unknown samples aimed at the military and
nuclear energy industry. This technology has allowed multi-million
pound savings on the operational costs of nuclear plants due to their
functionality in normally inaccessible radioactive environments thus
avoiding the need for a power station shutdown.

Establishing a laboratory in the Atomic Weapons Establishment
(AWE) dedicated to the stewardship of UK's nuclear weapons stockpile and
chemical explosives by detecting isotopic abundances in uranium samples
and analysing the composition of munitions deteriorating in desert
environments;

Assisting the design and development of a new product line of Spectrum
Technologies, a market-leading company which removes specialised
enamel insulation from conductors used in the aerospace industry.

Submitting Institution

Swansea University

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

Research at the University of Cambridge, Department of Physics on
sensitive techniques for measurements of magnetic and electrical
properties of materials led to the selection of Dr Michael Sutherland as
an expert witness in a series of major police investigations involving
fraudulent bomb detecting equipment. Scientific evidence Dr Sutherland
presented in court was key in securing guilty verdicts, leading to the
breakup in 2013 of several international fraud rings with combined revenue
in excess of £70 million. This criminal activity had caused significant
damage to the reputation of the UK in Iraq and elsewhere.

Summary of the impact

Researchers at the University of Bristol's Interface Analysis Centre
played a key role in making it possible to extend the life of two nuclear
power stations. Their insights into how the microstructure of reactor-core
graphite degrades during service and how the material fractures enabled
Magnox Ltd to construct a convincing safety case for Oldbury nuclear power
station to operate for an extra four years and Wylfa power station to run
for an additional four to six years. In terms of the value of the
electricity generated, these extensions are worth some £5 billion. In
addition, the longer lifespan of these low-carbon power sources means that
less energy has to be generated from other, high-carbon sources, with the
environmental benefit of an overall reduction in CO2 emissions.